As the camera moved in to share visual space with the sketch book, crayons and water colours, professional photographers as well as eager amateurs became accomplished recorders of a changing India. Among the foreign photographers whose images are perhaps best remembered are Margaret Bourke-White and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Apart from the sheer brilliance of many of their visuals, they were recording the cataclysmic India of the mid-1940s, and find a place in public memory. Bourke-White’s iconic image of Gandhiji spinning in half-light and, as she wrote, that of the “dramatically handsome” Jinnah, as well as many horrific, and, at times poignant, photographs of 1947, and Cartier-Bresson’s of the easy camaraderie between Edwina Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru have an immediate mnemonic resonance for many Indians.

Some photographers had official approbation, others worked away quietly, their work little known at the time. And then there were those whose images were displayed in the early years of Independence, to be succeeded by a period of hibernation, re-emerging in the 1990s as the world became increasingly aware of the value of the archival photograph. In 1948, at the first photographic exhibition held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, on display were perhaps the first images of Khajuraho, taken by the young Swiss photographer, Raymond Burnier, and the Frenchman, Alain Daniélou — musicologist, artist, writer and, of course, traveller and photographer.

In 1932, the two came to Santiniketan, where they spent four years at the invitation of Rabindranath Tagore. They soon became an integral part of the syncretist vision of the institution; Burnier’s Leica framed the poet, unique buildings of the educational complex, its students and general ambience that subtly merged the lushness of rural Bengal with understated structures, while Daniélou actively collaborated in a musical enterprise. Daniélou writes in The way to the Labyrinth: Memories of East and West that as “the poet was a great universalist and wanted his musical works to be known outside India”, he asked the Frenchman to undertake the job of transcription and arrangement of some of his songs “so that they could be performed by Westerners”. Spending many days “lying on the grass... hummering [sic] the melodies and attempting to find French or English words that could be inserted into the melodic form”, Daniélou persisted in a task that required “endless rephrasing and readjustments”. After the death of “Gurudev, the Divine Master, with whom I had spent my first years discovering India”, he was asked by the poet’s son, Rathindranath, to provide an orchestral version for Jana Gana Mana. Aware of the sensitive nature of the task, Daniélou goes on to add that he “made a quick trip to Paris to ask my old friend and master, Max d’Ollone, to check over my work. We rapidly composed arrangements for orchestra and brass band”.

By the end of the 1930s, when Daniélou and Burnier moved to Varanasi, they began a fascinating process of visually documenting Indian society. Their oeuvre was well represented in an exhibition — India through the lenses of Alain Daniélou and Raymond Burnier — held recently at the India International Centre, New Delhi. Organized primarily by the Alain Daniélou India committee, this selection of 42 black-and-white photographs from the many thousands in the Alain Daniélou/Raymond Burnier photo collection represent the various phases in the life of the two artists. While the curatorial team points out that “authorship” of individual photographs is not always clear, Daniélou’s images with his Rolleiflex concentrated more on social commentary whereas Burnier focused on sculpture and temple architecture.

Their usual mode of conveyance for over hundreds of miles was a car with a trailer imported from the United States hitched to it. Rewa Kothi — rented from the Maharaja of Rewa — that overlooked Varanasi’s Assi Ghat became Daniélou and Burnier’s home — “a palace hospitable to musicians, prestigious personalities, wandering monks as well as migratory birds and monkeys”. While the latter are not represented in the present exhibition, the intricate tapestry of life in the Kothi is brought alive by many photographs that invite the viewer to participate. A long top shot by Burnier captures Alain studying in what appears to be the baithak khana, aglow with sunlight pouring in from the French windows. Daniélou sits comfortably on a takht with bolsters all around, and the camera doesn’t miss a corner of the horizontal cloth pankha as well as the gallery above — perhaps used by ladies of the zenana in an earlier life of the Kothi.

Conventional shots of Varanasi, its ghats, the wildly billowing sails of boats during the monsoons, are offset by powerful images of the male body: in the entire exhibition, there is not a single one that features a woman or girl. There is Ramprasad, the boatman, cheerfully oblivious of the fact that the world will see him clad in only a langot, and the sculpted Kelo Nayar, a Kathak dancer, as he poses on what appears to be a precarious parapet. His well-oiled muscles that ripple with an unmistakable sensuality mesmerize the viewer, as does his direct, almost arrogant, gaze. Photographer and subject had clearly spent considerable time in composing the image where the dancer puts his weight on his right hand and his left leg and arm are stretched taut, glistening in what was possibly a hot north Indian day. He too is minimally clad.

Daniélou’s musical background attracted a number of young performers to Rewa Kothi and the camera is used to reach out to the intense concentration in a group of kirtan singers and the furrowed brow of a young flautist, a sadhu with ringlets and wisps of hair flowing through his long fingers that wind delicately around his instrument. Qawals, veena and shehnai players are represented, usually in semi-profile, in compositions that use background, light and shade imaginatively; Hira Lal and Shyam Lal lean against each other as they play their flutes, a synergy flowing through their lithe bodies. Rewa Kothi was now a salon de musique, hosting the youthful Ravi Shankar, Alla Rakha and the Dagar brothers. Daniélou did the first recording of Ravi Shankar, and there is a somewhat formulaic composition of him playing the esraj whilst he leans against a pillar, a half smile on his lips. On the other hand, in this far more dramatic image of Ravi Shankar blowing on the ransin (picture), the photographer has taken the shot from a slight elevation, absorbing into the frame the entire sweep of the large Himalayan trumpet as also the paved area — maybe a courtyard — sloping away into the distance. Ravi Shankar occupies only about a third of the photograph, and though the huge trumpet dominates somewhat, the curve of the ground cover at the edge of the image that was not cropped, gives a sense of infinity.

The Rewa Kothi photo studio continued till 1954 and during these years, Daniélou and Burnier travelled widely, consolidating their growing portfolios with detailed photographs of temple architecture and sculpture. In many, the focus was on musical instruments; in others, it was erotica that absorbed them. While Burnier’s camera was never far away, nor were Daniélou’s paints and pencil. A viewing of even a fraction of their work allows us entrée into the world view of two men, who, though born Europeans, adopted India as their home for a good part of their creative lives. Though by the 1950s, the two men were back in Europe and lived separately, their earlier joint photographic work is a significant contribution to portraiture: in many images, it is as though the subjects imaginatively composed and placed within frames were seeking engagement — if not conversation — with the viewer. The era of the “mould of the mugshot”, if one can put it that way, was clearly over.